Code Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel Read online

  I fired, fired, fired.

  There was thunder. Theirs, mine, and real booms coming from above. It all blended together into a deafening symphony of intolerable noise. The figures reeled back. Some falling, some staggering. I swapped out my magazine as I lunged across the seat. With a savage grunt I jerked open the door.

  “Ghost—hit!”

  A flash of snarling white barged past me, knocking me into the steering wheel. Outside I heard a terrible scream of pain.

  Then I was crawling over the seat, over Reggie, shoving my gun hand out the door, firing at anything standing. I saw two of my bullets hit a figure, once in the chest and once in the jaw. The impact tore half his face away and he spun around and fell into the glare of headlights. My third shot blew out the Hummer’s left headlight.

  As I emerged from the car, I saw that chaos ruled the street. One man was down, hands clamped to his stomach as he rolled back and forth. Probably the idiot who’d been hit with a ricochet. A second man leaned against the grill of the Humvee, bleeding from a bullet wound to the thigh, fingers slick with rainwater and blood as he tried to swap magazines on an AK-47. I shot him three times in the chest and once in the head. Ghost had a third man down and all I could see was teeth and torn flesh and a hell of a lot of blood.

  The first man I’d shot in the face was down, too.

  That left one of the attackers uninjured. He was the one with the tire iron, and he lunged forward and swung it at my head.

  If he’d backed up, dropped the tire iron, and pulled his gun, he might have had me.

  Might have.

  I was moving pretty fast by that point, though, going past the obstruction of the open Explorer door, swinging my gun up.

  The tire iron came whistling down through the rain and hit the top of my gun so hard that the weapon was torn from my hands. Pain shot through my fingers and wrists and ran like an electric charge all the way to my elbows.

  The guy stared at my empty hands as if he was stunned that his desperate blow had worked. I was surprised, too, but I didn’t think a gaper delay in the middle of a fight was a good tactical move. So I rushed him, launched myself into a flying tackle, wrapped my arms around him and his tire iron, and smashed down into a huge puddle. It geysered up around us. I never heard the tire iron fall, but the guy’s hands were empty and he started punching me in the face. He had small hands and he didn’t really know what he was doing. I could feel his hand bones break on my cheeks and forehead and jaw. While he did that, I wrapped my aching hands around his throat and shoved him down under the water. He beat at my face, my shoulders, my chest. His body writhed and bucked. He tried everything he could to fight back, but I strangled him and drowned him in eight inches of muddy rainwater. Something inside the circle of my hands, inside the structure of his throat, broke, and then the hands fell away.

  And then it was over.

  I reeled back, a savage growl tearing its way from my throat as I twisted around to see if there was anyone else who needed to die.

  There was no one.

  The man Ghost had attacked was dead, his throat gone.

  The fool who’d been hit by a ricochet lay near him, no longer bleeding. The dead don’t bleed. Ghost had gotten to him while I was fighting in the puddle.

  My dog raised his head and looked at me with eyes that were ancient and strange. Wolf eyes in a dog face. I knew that what he saw in return were not the eyes of a civilized man. Nor the eyes of a cop or a special operative. In that moment, I—like he—was a more primal thing. A killer. A savage.

  The rain fell and fell, each drop as hard as a needle.

  I looked down at the man I’d strangled.

  It wasn’t a man.

  It was a woman.

  Barely.

  Her face floated in dirty water. Thin, frail. Features that might once have been lovely were distorted by the pain of her death. Eyes bulging, tongue protruding between full lips.

  She couldn’t have been older than twenty.

  Maybe not that old.

  A girl.

  Dead in a ditch, with her throat crushed into an improbable shape by the brutality of my hands.

  A girl who’d tried very hard to kill me.

  A girl who matched the Identikit sketch of the missing Asian woman from the Arlington team of hackers.

  The others around me were young, too. Three men, one other woman. The first one I’d shot in the face was a woman, too. No way to tell how old she’d been. There wasn’t enough of her face for that. Only the damaged landscape of her body told me that she was female.

  Young.

  All of them so damn young.

  I rose very slowly. The shakes started then, shuddering their way through my muscles on relentless waves of adrenaline, fear, and revulsion.

  Ghost was shivering, too.

  He whined in the rainy darkness.

  Somewhere, a million miles away, I heard a voice. Reggie.

  “Joe…? God … are we okay?”

  It was a stupid question.

  No, I nearly said. No, we’re not okay.

  But I couldn’t say that to him.

  So I said nothing.

  Around me there was so damn much death.

  And no answers at all.

  Chapter Nine

  East McComas Street

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Friday, May 20, 8:41 p.m.

  That was a long damn night, followed by a longer day.

  So many questions.

  From my people, from the cops, from Homeland and everyone else. From Vice President Collins’s Cybercrimes Task Force. Everyone wanted to know what happened. I told the same story forty times. It didn’t make any more sense the fortieth time than it did while it was happening.

  None of the five dead people had ID. The Humvee was stolen. The serial numbers had been removed from the weapons, and ballistics didn’t match anything on record. No fingerprints on file.

  We had to wait for dental records and DNA. The woman I’d strangled was named Luisa Kan. Korean by birth, raised in foster care, and a runaway at fourteen. She was nineteen when I’d killed her.

  Reggie said that she looked like Mother Night. He was sure it was her.

  So who were the others? Two were Asian: a twenty-two-year-old Japanese boy named Hiro Tanaka who’d come to America as an exchange student three years ago and dropped completely off the radar; and Sally Lu, fifth-generation Chinese American, twenty years old and a junior at the University of Southern California. Last seen at the end of the spring term. We were unable to verify that she was the same woman Reggie met in Arlington. There was simply not enough evidence.

  The others were Neil Cox, nineteen, a former employee of a store that sold role-playing and video games; and Arnie Olensky, a high school dropout with no work record. Both of them from Baltimore.

  All of them dead.

  Jerry Spencer and his forensics team worked their apartments. They found money, expensive video game consoles, including one handheld that was like a souped-up Gameboy, but which no one could identify. Bug later said that it was the most sophisticated handheld game he’d ever seen. He did a patent search on it and found nothing. It was loaded with a bunch of games, but most of them were standard first-person shooter stuff. Except for one, a Mission: Impossible–style intrusion game called Burn to Shine. However, when Bug tried to hack the game software it triggered a series of microcharges. The game was destroyed and Bug spent a week in the hospital. They found nothing else of value.

  The phrase “burn to shine” stuck in my mind. Violin had told me that those words were painted in blood on a wall in an illegal genetics lab in Vilnius, Lithuania. So far no one understood the exact meaning, at least as far as Mother Night’s organization viewed it.

  Various agencies worked the case. Nobody made headway, and it eventually reached that point in an investigation where the various agencies covertly dropped out so they wouldn’t be seen as the agency still fruitlessly searching.

  Bug k
ept his people on it, though, and MindReader dug up every known fact on the five dead kids. We had a ton of information and we knew absolutely nothing.

  If they had political ties to Iran, China, or North Korea, MindReader couldn’t find them. No one could.

  After a month, the investigation ground to a halt. There was simply nowhere to go with it. The press had bailed, frustrated by the lack of anything juicy to follow up the initial news of five good-looking kids dead by violence.

  My name stayed out of it. Press releases from Homeland declined to name the “agents involved.” Reasons of national security, yada-yada.

  I spent some time with Rudy Sanchez, drinking beers with him in my dad’s backyard, and sitting on the couch in his office. Rudy listened. We talked. He gave great advice on dealing with the shock and feelings of self-loathing that any moral person would feel after such an encounter.

  Again, yada-yada.

  Nothing he said, nothing Church said, nothing Junie said, could change the fact that I’d strangled a teenage girl and participated in the slaughter of four other young people. Kids.

  I knew I’d take the memories of that night with me to the grave. Just as I knew that on my bad nights, on those nights when the hinges of the Pandora’s Box in my damaged head come loose and the monsters sneak out, then five ghosts would be standing beside my bead. Watching me with accusation in their dead eyes.

  Maybe if we knew what all of this meant, then there would be some closure for me.

  Maybe.

  But I doubted it.

  Chapter Ten

  Camden Court Apartments

  Camden and Lombard Streets

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Tuesday, May 31, 6:54 a.m.

  On the last day of May, Junie found me on the balcony of our apartment. I was in my boxers and undershirt with the macramé lap blanket from the couch wrapped around my shoulders.

  “Joe—?” she asked, her voice soft and tentative.

  Without waiting for my reply she came out onto the balcony and sat down next to me. It was a strange morning, with shreds of clouds scattered haphazardly against a dark blue sky that refused to grow brighter as the sun rose. In the distance a few big birds rode the thermals, but from that distance I couldn’t tell if they were gulls or vultures.

  Carrion birds either way.

  Junie lifted the edge of the blanket and snuggled up against me.

  “Aren’t you freezing?” she asked.

  I shrugged. Truth was that I hadn’t noticed the temperature.

  I kept looking at the birds, but I could feel Junie’s eyes on me as she studied the side of my face.

  “Tell me,” she said. It was gently said, an offer instead of a demand. And it was part of our rhythm. We each had a lot of complications in our personal history; we’d each been battered by the circumstances of lives lived in the storm lands. She had every right to be more emotionally screwed up than me, God knows, but Junie was far more balanced. More at peace with who and what she was. The same cannot be said of me.

  “Bad night,” I said.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Couldn’t shut my head down.”

  She kissed my shoulder.

  The winds of morning kept tearing the clouds into gray and white tatters.

  “Those kids?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Joe … I remember you once telling me that if the bad guy deals the play then he owns whatever happens. Those are your exact words.”

  “Clever words, too. I should put them on my business cards.”

  “Come on, Joe, what else could you have done? And don’t tell me that it’s not the point. We both know it is.”

  “You’re quoting Rudy.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, and there was an edge of irritation in her voice. She was a smart and empathic woman, and it was unfair of me to say that she was cribbing lines from anyone else.

  “Sorry. It’s just that Rudy’s been harping on me with that for a couple of weeks.”

  “Maybe you should listen to one of us. I think it’s fair to say that he and I know you best. Okay, Rudy knows you better and longer than I do, but I know you, Joe. I do. And I know that sometimes you look for ways to beat yourself up over things that are beyond your control and aren’t your fault.”

  “It’s more complicated than—”

  She cut me off. “I know it’s more complicated than that. Of course it is. The life you live is extremely…” she fished for the right word, “… difficult. The things Mr. Church asks of you, the things you ask of yourself, not only push your body to dangerous limits, they constantly put you in situations where there is no good option, only options less terrible than others. I’ve seen that, Joe. I saw what you had to do to protect me the day we met, and what you had to do in order to save everyone from disaster. I saw it. Just as I saw the hurt in your eyes afterward.”

  I said nothing. Her body was a warm anchor to a better world and I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feel of her arm and breast where they pressed against my side.

  “The question, my sweet love,” she said softly, “isn’t whether you did something wrong. You didn’t. You couldn’t do anything other than what you did. No, the question is whether you need to go back to the fight. We both know that this kind of war won’t really end. Terrorism is a fact of our lives. It’ll be here forever because there will always be hatred in the world and technology has gotten so user-friendly that anyone can reach out through the Net to do harm or cook up something in a cheap lab. I spent years talking about this sort of thing on my podcast, and it’s not all conspiracy theories. This is our world.”

  “I know, but…”

  “But do you have to be the one to fight everyone’s battles, Joe?”

  I said nothing. I didn’t dare, because I knew what my answer would be.

  “Joe … listen to me. If you’re fighting because you’re afraid to stop fighting, then you’re fighting the wrong war. Maybe it’s time to stop.”

  I watched the carrion bird circle high in the sky.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Interlude Two

  The Hangar

  Floyd Bennett Field

  Brooklyn, New York

  Seven Years Ago

  Miss Artemisia Bliss looked out the window. “Am I allowed to ask where we’re going?”

  Midway through the interview Dr. Hu left the room to make a call, and when he returned he told her that they were going to take a drive. Without telling her anything else, he escorted her down to the lobby, where they were met by two very tall, very imposing men in dark suits. Hu knew that she was sharp enough to peg them as Secret Service or the equivalent. Outside, they got into a black Escalade that had a third man behind the wheel. The big car headed straight to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

  Now they were in Brooklyn, heading west on I-278.

  “Am I allowed to know where we’re going?” asked Miss Bliss.

  “You’ll see,” said Hu.

  She nodded, accepting the conditions.

  “You’re fond of games,” said Hu, coming at her out of left field.

  She gave him a full second’s appraisal, then nodded. “Sure. Video games, mostly. Some RPG stuff and simulations.”

  “I’m going to shock and possibly offend you,” said Hu.

  She said nothing.

  “According to your debit card purchase history, you’re a frequent flyer at GameStop and other stores. Are you angry that I know this?”

  “I’m not pleased,” she said, “but not surprised. I’ll bet you know all sorts of things about me.”

  She smiled when she said that, and Hu’s pulse jumped a gear. Was that a flirty smile? There was definitely some kind of challenge there. He kept his composure intact, however.

  “Thorough background checks are necessary for reasons you’ll discover shortly.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt.” She paused, then prompted, “Games—?”

  “Right. Games.”
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  “What about them?”

  “That’s what I want you to tell me,” said Hu. “What’s your interest?”

  “Amusement?”

  “Please.”

  She shrugged. “The real answer is kind of boring.”

  “Try me.”

  “I like to solve problems,” she said. “The tougher the challenge, the more fun it is.”

  “You bought the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. How’d you do on the Water Temple level?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Yes. Did you beat it?”

  “When I was like … ten?”

  “You survived the jet ski level of Battletoads?”

  “Sure.”

  “What was your best time?”

  “It’s not about best time. It’s about remembering where you died in previous tries. I only played it six times, and beat it on the seventh try. I didn’t have a stopwatch running.”

  “Have you done a speedrun?” he asked, referring to one his own favorite aspects of gaming, which was a play-through of a whole video game or a selected part of it, with the intent of completing it as fast as possible. Although Hu didn’t compete with other gamers except a kid named Jerome Williams—known familiarly as Bug—recently hired by Mr. Church. They were neck-and-neck at speedruns of most games.

  “Sure. Everyone does a speedrun once in a while.”

  “Did you do one of Battletoads?”

  “No,” she said. “Haven’t played it since I beat it.”

  “Why?”

  “I beat it, and then beat it again,” said Bliss. “What would be the point?”

  “To beat your best time…?”

  Hu smiled. “What about Halo: Combat Evolved, the Library level? To beat your best time…”

  Bliss snorted. “Overrated. I beat that on my second try. I expected more.”

  “Super Mario Sunshine, the—”

  “Corona Mountain level,” she finished for him.

  “How fast did you beat that level?”

  She considered. “It’s not about how fast, okay? Only gamer newbies or people who don’t game care about time. It’s about how. For Super Mario Sunshine, you can only get to Corona Mountain by clearing the seventh episode of all other areas. But the real challenge is the boat controls. You have to propel a boat by facing backwards and turning on the spray nozzle, then navigate through a section of platforms with either retracting spikes or fire. But you have to figure out how to use the Hover Nozzle.”